First of all, we at MKCREATIVE wish you and yours a Happy Labor Day. May it be but one day away from work, as we await the political promises of jobs creation by the Republican candidates on Tuesday night, and President Obama’s long-awaited (LONG-awaited) jobs plan on Thursday.
Will early adoption of G+ strike down the F?
As those two events unfold, how will they be shared across social networks? Will Twitter explode with slings and arrows? Will Facebook posts jib and jab at both candidates and incumbent? Or will Google+ start to show its own authority as a major player in the social-media-platform competition?
Google+ was rolled out this past spring to a select few who could pass it on to a select few more, and we discussed that rollout as a clever way to boost the hype while helping Google control expectations. As fall slowly approaches, the platform has been out long enough that nonprofits are starting to have their say about how useful the application is. That said, the overwhelming response seems to be optimistic caution. Why?
We are still so early in Google+’s release lifecycle, that many who comment on the platform couch their reactions with comments like “wait-and-see”, “too early to tell”, “we’ll see where Google takes this feature…” The Gartner Research Group has developed what it calls ‘Hype Cycles‘ for various technologies (a subscription is required to view the specifics of certain technologies and their own Hype Cycles). Google+ is arguably just before or just after the ‘Peak of Inflated Expectations’ as early developers begin to weigh in.
Beth Kanter, for example, outlines her experience on helping launch the Packard Foundation’s drive to secure health insurance for children just as Google+ was slowly working its way out, and how people felt about taking on that platform along with Facebook and Twitter.
Beth’s experience, as related on her blog, is that even the most technologically ambitious nonprofits she spoke to are developing a presence on Google+, but are still waiting for further development/shake-out to see whether to devote more resources to it.
What struck me most about the conversation is that consultants, early adopter nonprofits, and free agents all agree that the platform is evolving fast and there is still too much uncertainty for nonprofits to invest a lot of time and resources in Google+.
Many nonprofits are conscious of avoiding ‘Shiny Object Syndrome’ as one of her peers called it: that they get all excited about the new platform, to the extent that they ignore their established bases on established networks – only to discover that an equitable community does not (yet?) exist on Google+.
Needless to say, we’ll be helping you keep an eye on Google+ developments, so stay tuned. Indeed, next Monday we’ll see how others have responded to Google+, and to how social-media analysts have responded to it.
